A tough balance

What is the whole purpose of education: getting a job or working for knowledge, be innovative and serve the humanity and the world in a better way? A large number of students limit themselves to the first option, while very few think of going for innovative knowledge.
Once seen as a place of learning where young school pass outs considered to be going to broaden their knowledge and perspective of life, which included some amount of social service and greater amount of innovation and knowledge.
Now most of the colleges have limited only to the goal of offering education that makes them fit for a 9 to 5 job.
The flip side of it is the fact that the very orientation of innovation is missing in the colleges.
One innovation would have potential to creating thousands of jobs. The gap thus of employer and employees is widening and the whole world today is suffering from the crisis of joblessness. The choice of courses among the students also has changed dramatically.
The number of students getting enrolled for humanities subjects has fallen under the pressure of the requirements of job market, as an undergraduate degree in history, sociology; political science is treated as something who cannot fetch a job. Thus there is unnecessary pressure on job fetching technical courses like engineering, medicine and business administration.
It is creating a situation in which there are not enough seats for so called job fetching courses and in the race of demand for such courses quality of education has deteriorated and due to over production of graduates in those streams everyone do not have guarantee of getting a job.
The imbalance caused due to this situation needs to be noted.
Earlier higher education was good choice among college students, many of whom were opting for research and academic jobs. Today in the race of getting quickest possible jobs they are not pursuing higher education, thus putting pressure on hiring system and creating a void in the academic field. Research also has become a victim in this race.
Representatives of some major private higher education institutions taking part in an Education Interaction Meet in Salalah admitted the trend and suggested them to keep their plan B ready to avoid any frustration.
They exhorted students to pursue studies in the areas of their own interest ‘as opportunities are limited not only to medical and engineering streams.’
They underlined the fact that apart from medicine and engineering there were many courses in humanities, commerce and applied sciences that offer good career growth.
To fill the gap of knowledge and sheer job-oriented courses a section of academics suggests introduction of liberal arts studies as foundation course compulsory to all undergraduate college students.